[11639] in Athena Bugs
decmips 7.6G: xmh
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lynn B. Reid)
Fri Jan 21 11:46:30 1994
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 94 11:46:26 EST
From: Lynn B. Reid <lbreid@MIT.EDU>
System name: skye
Type and version: KN01 7.6G (1 update(s) to same version)
Display type: PMAX-MFB
What were you trying to do?
Use xmh
What's wrong:
The program is not up to the normal standards of X programs.
Basically, it is a very old program that has very few features
and is INCREDIBLY slow. Why, here at MIT, home of X, do we
have such a crappy mailer?
Often, xmh crashes for no obvious reason, when I try to open a
new window (e.g. hit compose). Sometimes the error occurs int
the middle of writing a draft. The error on the console
window sometimes looks like:
11:36 xmh: No such file or directory
11:36 xmh: Error in FOpenAndCheck(/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/l/b/lbreid/Mail/drafts/.xmhcache, r)
11:36 errno = 2; No such file or directory
11:36 exiting.
What should have happened:
xmh should be faster, more reliable, prettier, and have more features.
For example, why isn't there a menu choice of "include file" or
"extract mail message to file"?
A more pleasing alternative would be standard line-editor unix mail.
This repl,comp,scan,show junk requires the average user to learn
much too much.
Alternatively, the Digital program dxmail is not bad. There are
many other alternatives, as well. Why doesn't athena support a
better one?
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
